From Bloomberg: "Microsoft, the world's largest software company, provides intelligence agencies with information about bugs in its popular software before it publicly releases a fix, according to two people familiar with the process. That information can be used to protect government computers and to access the computers of terrorists or military foes." The lid has officially been blown off.

NSA to Public: If you've doing nothing wrong there is nothing to worry about us looking at your communications.

ANSWER(Pubic back to NSA): Tough! You have NO right to eaves drop on our communications. None!

(and I hope eventually one day the tools will exist and made 'simple' and that then the public at large will start using onion routers, hidden services, distributed DNS alternatives, encryption, perhaps even some 'alternative routing' of some traffic 'off the mainline internet'..e.g. over city wide wifi networks or similar.

Before then, I hope some smart-asses start a viral phenomenon of using SEO inspired tools/ 'apps' to INSERT AI driven and grammatically correct/functional 'naughty keywords' - all the kinds of obvious things I'm not going to mention here that might be likely to be spied upon INTO EVERY TRIVIAL non-sensical, and umimportant email, social network, blog post, message board etc.. as they can stomach ...i.e. make and awful lot of the little bits of the hay in the stack look like needles... it's what they deserve!

Public to NSA: We want more transparency, if *you're* doing nothing wrong you won't mind.

ANSWER(NSA back to Public): stoney echoey silence. (not a hint of regret, remorse or mutual open discussion ) ;

you're just Apes like the rest of us Mr Government and Mr NSA - you're not special. You have NO more rights. Even if you 'granted them to yourselves' !